Phoenix’s suburbia was unlike anything else in the world.

  I could have been almost anywhere in the city. Anywhere. The two-story house was different—most houses that had survived the Portal Blitz had been ranch-style. But it wasn’t unusual, either. There were hundreds of them in and around Mesa, Surprise, and every other town that’d been eaten by the ever-growing Phoenix metro. I could have been anywhere.

  But I wasn’t. I was in Mesa. And if I was in Mesa, in front of that house, then this wasn’t real. But it was an opportunity. I checked my status.

  User: Kade Noelstra

  Reforged Core, A-Rank

  Stamina: 143/470 (+10), Mana: 358/600 (+10)

  Skills:

  1. Stormsteel Core (A-01 to A-03, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)

  2. Thunderbolt Forms (A-01 to A-02, Altered, Merged)

  3. Mistwalk Forms (A-01 to A-03, Altered, Merged)

  4. Cyclone Forms (A-01 to A-03, Altered, Merged)

  5. Stormlight Bond (B-05 to B-08, Altered, Merged)

  6. Shadowstorm Battery (C-05, Altered, Merged, Dual)

  7. Stormbreak (C-02 to C-06, Unique)

  Path: Stormsteel Path

  Aura: Negative Space

  Laws: First Law of the Stormcore, Law of the Shadowed Storm, First Law of Darkened Lightning, Law of the Unyielding Maelstrom, Third Law of the Sirocco, Second Law of the Stormlight

  It was an opportunity to see my dad again, if I was strong enough.

  I readied Nimbus Edge and stalked toward my childhood home’s door. Before my hand even tightened on the doorknob, I was already remembering. The fencing pitch in the backyard. The weight sets—all the way from normal-sized dumbbells to a barbell with well over half a ton on it for Dad. My room, and Jessie’s. The house’s layout was seared into my memory like the afterimages of lightning against my eyelids.

  I opened the door.

  Hive Guardian: C-Rank Monster

  Nimbus Edge shot out in a lunge before I even took in the centipede on the stairs. It punched into the monster’s chitin, then through it, blowing out the other side in a windburst that shattered armor and spewed ichor across the stairs. The C-Rank monster died instantly.

  The sword stayed up. My heart pounded. If the monsters were already inside…

  Something was wrong here. Horribly wrong. This wasn’t how it had gone. Not how it had happened. I took the stairs three at a time, legs screaming even as I sprinted up to the second floor. The bathroom door hung open. So did my bedroom, and Jessie’s. No one was home.

  What was going on here? This wasn’t how it had gone. Dad had been coming home from a portal. Jessie and I had been home—she’d been on her computer, or meditating, and I’d been drilling my basics in the backyard fencing pitch. I stepped into my room and walked to the window, then pulled the shade open.

  I wasn’t out there.

  In a way, that was a relief.

  But there were centipedes out there—dead ones. Someone had been killing here already, and if someone had been killing, Dad had to be around here somewhere. Maybe in this world, he’d saved Jessie and me. Either way, all I’d have to do was follow the bodies.

  As I walked through the upstairs and back down the stairs, Nimbus Edge stayed at the ready. There was another C-Rank centipede—a spitter—in the kitchen. I killed it quickly, pushing a little Stamina to the acid burn on my shoulder as its head flopped away from its many-legged body. Then I opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the patio.

  We’d had a pool. It had been empty and boarded up most of the time, but I remembered three times when we’d filled it. Twice for birthdays, and once when the therapists had tried water therapy for Jessie. The fencing strip sat next to it, marked in the yellow-pink gravel with white spray paint.

  Today, though, the pool’s plywood cover was missing.

  I stared down past the rim of tiles and into the pool’s depths. There was no water, but there was a hole—a hole big enough for me to fit inside easily. It sat at the bottom of the four-foot-deep section, a packed-dirt hole that led to nothing but blackness. This wasn’t how it had been. The portal had broken across the street, in a vacant house. The centipedes had ripped through the front door, then fought their way up the stairs as Dad tried to hold them off and I got Jessie into the bathroom. The back yard had still been intact, even after I’d used Stormbreak.

  None of this made sense. I wished Tank was here—or even better, Ellen. Anyone would have been fine, though. I just needed to share my confusion with someone. To talk to someone about what I saw and felt.

  But there wasn’t anyone, so after a moment to gather myself, I dropped down into the pit, feet first, and let Nimbus Edge’s lightning light up the darkness.

  I hit the ground hard.

  Two pincerlike mandibles clacked shut in the air over my head. I rolled right. Nimbus Edge came up, blocking the jaws as the centipede’s eyes refocused on me. The back of my spine tingled, and I spun. A second centipede threw itself at me. I dropped to a knee. My arm burned from two jagged cuts and the burning, searing acid on the monster’s jaws. My sword shot out and cut into the second centipede’s chest.

  A third appeared near the cave’s exit, twenty feet away—a spitter. Then a fourth pushed its way past it, skittering across the ceiling. Four enemies. All C-Rank. I switched to Cyclone stance and backpedaled, dodging a glob of acid that burned away at a root near my face.

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  Avatar of Lightning. Rolling Thunder. A single Brendan’s Stormfire Lance that copied the Avatar, then a Lightning Chain that ripped me across the cavern toward the spitter. The Stormfire Lance hit first, boring a burning, crackling hole in the monster’s chest. Then I hit a moment later, feet first. Its carapace cracked, and reeking, rotten-smelling ichor poured onto the cave floor.

  And a section of wall shimmered, dirt replaced with stucco.

  The three Avatars of Lightning rushed their centipedes, lightning swords flashing, and in a moment, the room was quiet. “Good job, guys,” I said quietly, but my mind wasn’t on the fighting or the already-fading avatars. It was on the stucco wall. What was it doing down here?

  Nimbus Edge flashed as I drew it across the yellow-orange stucco. It parted, peeling away like paper and revealing a crack in the wall behind it—a crack large enough for me to slip inside, but only if I went sideways. Whatever was on the far side, I’d be unable to retreat. And this entire memory had gone completely wrong. This wasn’t my memory of that day. It was something else, and I couldn’t make any assumptions about what I’d find up ahead.

  But I also couldn’t go back. Physically, I could. I could use Chain Lightning, or Windwalk, and boost myself up to the pool’s bottom, then through the broken wood covering. I could go back to where I’d come in and try to leave through the Vision Gate. That might even be the right choice.

  I couldn’t, though. This was a nightmare; as I got my bearings, the sounds of hundreds of feet echoed off the tunnels’ floors and ceilings. But I had to see it through. If there was a chance I’d see Dad again, even in this imaginary, made-up section of the Fallen Delvers portal, I had to do it.

  Through the crack I went.

  And it was only halfway down it that something started to feel wrong. I couldn’t pin it down—it had nothing to do with the portal world or the vision, though. I pushed the feeling down and kept moving.

  There were monsters everywhere.

  Jeff’s arms screamed. His armor had given way in a dozen places, and blood poured from a wound across his forehead. The streets of Mesa were the stuff of nightmares, and he couldn’t stop fighting. But he’d found Yasmin. Sophia. Even Raul. The team was more or less together.

  More or less, because while he knew where Ellen was, he couldn’t get there.

  She’d ended up on top of a gigantic piece of the 303 Wall that had landed in the middle of the V-shaped gap the monsters were currently pouring through. Pepperoni was out in full view, firing lightning down into the masses of monsters, and Ellen herself was ‘safe’ behind a ruined Traynor-Overholz Cannon and a section of shattered elevator. Shadow Shapes danced across the gap, waves of flickering tentacles that ripped into the monsters rushing into Phoenix and, for a few seconds at a time, gave Jeff a break from the constant fighting.

  He’d been pushing hard for almost thirty minutes. Somehow, he was still alive. Somehow, Ellen hadn’t gotten swarmed under yet, but she was his teammate. It was his responsibility to help her, to cover for her so she could fight. And he couldn’t do it.

  Split-Second Shield flickered to life, then collapsed. He didn’t have the Mana to sustain it, and Yasmin was out of Mana for buffs, too. Sophia looked exhausted—and even more concerning, she’d completely shut down and gone robotic almost twenty minutes ago. She wasn’t even hyperventilating anymore, just going through the motions of healing.

  “We can’t keep this up,” Raul said. He punched his spear into an A-Rank monster’s chest; the tip bounced off, but there was a weakness there, and after almost twenty seconds, Jeff and Raul were able to kill the damn thing. “Seriously. We can’t hold.”

  Jeff glanced over his shoulder at Yasmin. She had an arm around Sophia’s shoulder; a monster had gotten a hold of her thigh, and she couldn’t stand by herself. “Soph’s out of juice, Jeff. We need to find a place to hole up and rest for a minute!”

  “I can’t,” Jeff said. “I have to hold. As long as I can. Ellen’s out there, and I have to get her back.”

  “If you keep it up, you’re going to get the whole team killed,” Yasmin said.

  “If I don’t, Ellen dies!”

  “She’s an A-Ranker. If anyone’s going to be okay right there, it’ll be her. I know you don’t want to leave her, but we’re all going to die if we keep it up.” Yasmin pushed off from Sophia and grabbed Jeff’s arm. “Please.”

  Five seconds until the next monster. Four. Jeff thought about it. He couldn’t leave Ellen on that chunk of portal metal and concrete. But he couldn’t let Sophia and Raul—and Yasmin—die, either.

  It was an impossible choice. Either way, he’d fail a teammate. Fail his people.

  Three. Two. One. He accepted his failure.

  “Start falling back,” he ground out through gritted teeth.

  The end of the crack came quickly.

  I stepped out into a square-walled room with painted plaster walls. There were no signs of centipedes anywhere, and tension melted off of me as I looked around. I hated centipedes as much as spiders. But even as my body tried to relax, another wave of tightness traveled out from my stomach.

  Nothing in this vision made any sense. I’d been fighting through centipedes, sure, and those were the same monsters that had killed Dad. But the house was empty, the pool wasn’t the portal break location, and this cave had…led to a plastered, painted room that looked a lot like my old living room. I just wanted to find my dad and get one more moment with him. That was all.

  Nimbus Edge crackled softly as I stepped into the center of the living room. The doors were all in the right place, but all of them were closed. The only doors we’d ever closed in the whole house had been bathrooms, our bedrooms, and the outside ones. The cooling system circulated better if they were open.

  But they were closed here.

  This entire place was a headache. I’d just been here, before I headed down into the pit, then through the fissure. I took another cautious step, then another, right to the nearest door.

  It was Dad’s bedroom. If he was anywhere in this nightmare, he’d be there.

  I pulled the door open.

  And sure enough, he was there. Or more accurately, something that looked like him was.

  Dad had never worn his armor unless he was delving, on his way to a portal, or on his way back. I’d spent a lot of time admiring it, though. Much like Jeff, he’d had a full set of C-Rank gear—full-face helmet with a fluted visor, heavy pauldrons, and a breastplate-and-fauld combo that covered his torso and legs. He’d always looked like a medieval knight, right down to the sword that had probably gotten him killed on the stairs. He’d picked it up at C-Rank, even though it didn’t fit his preferred style. It was too big to swing inside, and he’d known it. He’d had a second, smaller sword that he’d brought into battle, too.

  The…thing…that stood in front of me looked like he did when he wore his battle gear. It was the right height, and it stood like him, with its weight on its right leg and its right hand higher up on the two-handed sword. It even smelled right. Dad had always smelled like a specific soap or deodorant or whatever, and when it mixed with the leather-and-portal metal armor, it was distinct.

  But it wasn’t him.

  And I knew it.

  Rage filled me. I’d convinced myself that this—this thing—was what I needed. That if I could see Dad again, it’d be worth it. But it wasn’t just rage over the betrayal. Ellen, Jeff, and Jessie were counting on me. The whole city was counting on me, and I’d started chasing a memory the second I’d gotten the chance.

  As the Dad-thing that wasn’t Roger Gerald lifted its sword, I readied Nimbus Edge and took a few shuffling, fencer’s steps back into the living room. It was time to finish this portal and get back to the people that mattered—the people I could still help, and the promises I’d made.

  Vision of Family: A-Rank Monster

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